"Archeological,
historic pieces" from Japan is how the import paperwork described a Tyrannosaurus Bataar skull that illegally entered the United States. But the dinosaur
head should have been classified as a paleontological fossil from
Mongolia, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado.

Bataar skull seized by ICE.

This month John Richard "Rick"
Rolater pleaded guiltyto conspiring to import dinosaur fossils illegally. As part of a plea agreement with Wyoming federal
prosecutors, Rolater agreed not to contest the forfeiture of several
paleontological objects in his inventory, including the Bataar skull.

Colorado U.S. Attorney John Walsh says that Rolater "was known as the largest United States seller
of high-end Mongolian and Chinese fossils." In his office's 11 page forfeiture
complaint filed in federal district court last week, prosecutors allege that an
informant spotted the Bataar
skull for sale in Relator's store in Jackson, Wyoming boasting a price tag of
$320,000. The skull reportedly was "next to a placard stating that the
fossil was a Tyrannosaurus Bataar, which existed during the late Cretaceous
era, 67 million years ago, and was recovered from the Nemegt Basin in the Gobi
Desert, Mongolia, Central Asia."

When the informant
raised questions with the store about the skull's ownership, a clerk
purportedly replied, "Well, I guess that goes to show that if
you pay the right people ....," the prosecutors' complaint contends.

Prosecutors write in their court pleading that
federal officials "seized several computers from the Rolater residence,
and located numerous emails that showed Rolater knew it was illegal to import Chinese
or Mongolian fossils. Some of the emails further indicated that Rolater
conspired with others, and the import Customs forms were knowingly mislabeled,
misidentifying the country of origin for the fossils he purchased, and
mischaracterizing the contents of the imported items."

The forfeiture complaint
describes an equivocal conversation between one store clerk and an undercover
agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security
Investigations (HSI). The clerk "informed the undercover agent that the
fossilized Bataar skull was approximately 60% complete, that the skull was
recovered from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and that it was recovered from
private land in Mongolia in the 1980s, thereby creating the fiction that lawful
ownership was conveyed to the possessor of the skull."

The complaint alleges
that "the Bataar skull had been pulled from display [in the store] after the publicized New York seizure of another Bataar, to avoid
potential problems." The store clerk reportedly "told agents that the
Bataar fossil subject to seizure was stored in a closet within the [clerk's]
residence, and that Rick Rolater had directed [the clerk] to remove the
Bataar" from the store.

The complaint adds that
Rolater later told HSI "that his stores had sold five or six Bataar skulls
in the past six years, and that he did not currently possess any additional
Bataar fossils, other than the one seized in Jackson, Wyoming." But prosecutors go on to say that Rolater's lawyer corrected this
assertion, explaining that another Bataar skull was inside Rolater's home in
Colorado. HSI seized the skull:

Upon execution of
the warrants on August 1, 2012, HSI officers located defendant Bataar Skull,
which was found hidden in the crawl space of the residence, and appeared to
have been placed there recently. Officers also located defendant Gallimimus
Foot in the garage; it had a price tag on it which indicated that it also came
from Mongolia. Defendants Bataar Skull and Gallimimus Foot were seized as
illegally imported.

The forfeiture complaint
concludes that the Bataar skull and the Gallimimus foot were found to have been

excavated in
Mongolia in the mid-1990s and smuggled out of the country. The Bataar Skull was
shipped to Rolater from Japan in August 2010; the Customs declaration, which
Rolater knew was incorrect, listed not only the shipping country as Japan, but
also misstated that the country of origin of the fossil was Japan and that the
shipped contents consisted of "archeological, historic pieces" (which
are man-made), rather than the truthful "paleontological fossils."

The
legal basis upon which the U.S. Attorney's office relies to forfeit the fossils
is 18 U.S.C. § 981(A)(1)(C), which governs civil forfeitures of property derived from the proceeds of a crime. In this case, the crime alleged is smuggling under 18 U.S.C. § 545. Also relied on is 19 U.S.C. § 1595a(c), the customs statute that permits forfeiture of merchandise introduced into the U.S. "contrary to law." Prosecutors additionally reference Mongolia's 1924 patrimony law prohibiting personal ownership of cultural property as well as two Mongolian criminal statutes forbidding the transportation and smuggling of cultural objects.

This post is researched, written, and published on the blog Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St. Hilaire at culturalheritagelawyer.blogspot.com. Text copyrighted 2010-2014 by Ricardo A. St. Hilaire, Attorney & Counselor at Law, PLLC. Any unauthorized reproduction or retransmission of this post is prohibited. CONTACT INFORMATION: www.culturalheritagelawyer.com

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